India instituted the largest COVID-19 induced lockdown in the world to battle the pandemic and flatten the curve. In several months of social distancing and isolation, people, businesses, and national and state governments have deployed technology to get an edge over the pandemic.
To get an insight into how Indian authorities have leveraged technology to counter COVID-19, on this episode of the Digital India Summit we have Ravi Shankar Prasad, Union Minister of Law and Justice, Electronics and Information Technology and Communications. This fireside chat delves into key learning from the exercise and lasting impressions that will shape Government policy going forward.
Explaining how digital India has brought a change, Prasad said: “Yesterday, I got a very disturbing report of a farmer in Samastipur Bihar who was crashing all his cauliflower because he wasn’t getting proper price… not even one rupee per kilo. I connected to my common service centres, which are the digital kiosk all over the country, nearly 4 lakh in number… They have developed a Market app whereby they connect the farmers to the market. They reached him and connected him to a Delhi market. They agreed to purchase, send their vehicle, collected all the cauliflowers, and gave him Rs 10 per Kg for 4,000 Kgs of cauliflowers. Rs. 40, 000 digitally paid, and the entire vegetable was sold in Allahabad.”
He further said that “India has the potential to become a lead player of electronic manufacturing in the world.”
